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Asian research boss says that resources are already being put into the development of motion tech successor

Microsoft’s Natal is still a good seven or eight months away from launch, but a research director for the platform holder has already confirmed that work has begun on the successor to the technology.

“When we invent something first like Natal, while we have a researcher working with the product group for the first version we already have a researcher thinking about the second version down the road,” Microsoft's Research Asia department director Hsiao-Wuen Hon told The Sydney Morning Herald, as spotted by *****.

“We certainly hope we will continue to be holding that technology.”

Hon also added that Microsoft should have ideally been a leader – and not a follower – in the motion control sector, stating: “Looking back I can say we probably should have done more in the consumer space.”

Nice job microsoft... ditching your own technology. Then wait a long time to release it to the public while everyone knows a new successor is on its way...

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*sigh*

So in your world, R&D should just focus on one product at a time and not work on anything else until that's finished.

If it was like that in the real world, we'd all still be playing games on our SNES.

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Huhn? Excuse me while I check the product gap between SNES and N64, about 3-4 years wasn't it? Plenty of time for a new successor to be designed. Also he's not saying R&D should be on one thing at a time, just not start the successor to something waaay before the release (when there's still time to improve the current project)

I can understand something like this starting a month or 2 before initial release but almost a year? What the hell? Why not put more researchers onto improving the tech already being used? Seriously this is similar to the logic that Sega used when they developed the bomb that was the 32X they released it in the US when the Saturn was already out in Japan and we all know how that went.

What the hell, Natal's not even released yet and they're already making a successor. Seems like they know it'll be shit.

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You do know every company does this, right? Obviously they just keep it to themselves so people won't have these kinds of reactions. For all we know, Natal is probably already done and they're waiting to release it for some unknown reasons.

Nice job microsoft... ditching your own technology. Then wait a long time to release it to the public while everyone knows a new successor is on its way...

Click to expand...

*sigh*

So in your world, R&D should just focus on one product at a time and not work on anything else until that's finished.

If it was like that in the real world, we'd all still be playing games on our SNES.

Click to expand...

Huhn? Excuse me while I check the product gap between SNES and N64, about 3-4 years wasn't it? Plenty of time for a new successor to be designed. Also he's not saying R&D should be on one thing at a time, just not start the successor to something waaay before the release (when there's still time to improve the current project)

I can understand something like this starting a month or 2 before initial release but almost a year? What the hell? Why not put more researchers onto improving the tech already being used? Seriously this is similar to the logic that Sega used when they developed the bomb that was the 32X they released it in the US when the Saturn was already out in Japan and we all know how that went.

Click to expand...

The question is if they are already finished with Natal and are just manufacturing them to release for the holiday season. Why would they keep working on it so close to release that they might not make it in time(especially when they have more competition)? Other games and consoles probably have had as much development time before their previous versions even released.

Nice job microsoft... ditching your own technology. Then wait a long time to release it to the public while everyone knows a new successor is on its way...

Click to expand...

*sigh*

So in your world, R&D should just focus on one product at a time and not work on anything else until that's finished.

If it was like that in the real world, we'd all still be playing games on our SNES.

Click to expand...

Huhn? Excuse me while I check the product gap between SNES and N64, about 3-4 years wasn't it? Plenty of time for a new successor to be designed. Also he's not saying R&D should be on one thing at a time, just not start the successor to something waaay before the release (when there's still time to improve the current project)

I can understand something like this starting a month or 2 before initial release but almost a year? What the hell? Why not put more researchers onto improving the tech already being used? Seriously this is similar to the logic that Sega used when they developed the bomb that was the 32X they released it in the US when the Saturn was already out in Japan and we all know how that went.

Click to expand...

The question is if they are already finished with Natal and are just manufacturing them to release for the holiday season. Why would they keep working on it so close to release that they might not make it in time(especially when they have more competition)? Other games and consoles probably have had as much development time before their previous versions even released.

Click to expand...

After I wrote the post I thought about it and realised that they probably needed time to send the SDK out to developers so they have some games on hand, they're probably still tweaking the thing slightly though to get more accuracy out of it.